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May 10, 2006
What frustrates me ....
Hey - yeah, despite all of NLP, there are areas in my life where I am frustrated. I am frustrated when I cannot work as fast on my computer as I want to. I use to have too many Windows open - about 8-10 running Internet, plus my Outlook, and numerous e-mails that I started and still have to complete.
Then there is Excel and my PowerPoint presentations, not to forget numerous Word Documents. Yeah, I am working at many documents at the same time.
What frustrates me is the slow start up of Windows. And, of course, as all of us know, it slows down when the computer gets older. How many minutes do I waste waiting for the ubiquous Windows to appear. Any minute is too much. I am branded here by Microsoft, but not necessarily positively. My computer is new, or, just 6 months old, so its age is no argument to excuse the slow down.
Just imagine that:
- I wait a total of 5 minutes in the morning for the computer to start up, for my programs to load and my e-mail to download.
- I wait a total of 30 minutes (minimum) per day for the computer to switch from one program to the next (waiting, waiting....)
How long is that in total? 35 minutes - or a total of 165 minutes in a 5 days week - I nearly wait three hours!!
Now take the imaginary number of charges per hour - let's say RM600 per hour to make it easy. This equals
RM10 per minute. Do the math - this totals to RM1,650 per week or RM79,200 if we take a total of 48 working weeks in a year (okay, I have some holidays plus the public holidays, okay!).
Continue the math: If a company has 10 employees, this adds up to RM792,000, if they have 50 employees, this goes up to roughly RM3.96 employees (I excluded receptionists and those that don't work at a computer - i also assumed the same hourly charges across)
While my assumptions make this calculation vulnerable, I hope you get the point.
How much money is lost because of slow computers!! Wow!
Posted by Andreas at May 10, 2006 11:46 AM
Comments
Usually the problem with slow [but new] computers can only mean lack of RAM. This is either because the RAM itself is too low [256MB is minimum, 512MB is recommended] or you got rubbish running in the background. Try to keep it to just one antivirus and one firewall. Throw whatever 3rd party softwares like custom calendars or style xp out. Otherwise, run Spybots or Ad-Aware to get rid of stuff running behind your back. These programs are the ones usually eating up the most RAM.
A fresh P4 1.7Ghz machine should start up windows in less than 1 min. It should be able to start up multiple programs [about 2-3] under 30 seconds. Switching [alt+tab] between programs should not take more than 1 second. Losses suffered from waiting is severe, indeed.
Posted by: Silencers at May 15, 2006 10:56 AM
My computer is damn slow too! =( And I get really annoyed by it, sometimes I feel like kicking it. Though mine is slow, I suspect, cause of its RAM ...
Posted by: Liz at May 10, 2006 10:36 PM
Hmm... why your 'new' company so slow then?
Posted by: Inevitable at May 10, 2006 02:45 PM
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